my life [.me]

$1080 Water Bill!

An orange paper door hanger was waiting for us with a check mark next to ‘you might have a leak’.

Our water bill has been a little higher, which started about 4 months ago, but I thought it was due to more laundry cycles (almost every day to every other day) doing pet beds and laundry from work and vacation trips.

Our water bill came in the mail and was $1080 for the month!

So the ‘maybe you have a leak’ turned into ‘we definitely have a leak!’

I spend the other day calling plumbers, some were not available in our area, some not available, but I was able to get a really great plumber referred by a friend. He wasn’t able to come out that day, but was able to come this morning.

The leak was pretty noticeable in the front yard a few feet from the water meter was a pool of water.

Jeff (the plumber) started digging (about 4 feet down) and was able to find where the polyethylene tubing had cracked. He was able to replace that section with copper but said that the whole line should be replaced at some point because the rest of it will eventually fail.

Jeff also went into the crawl space and found our hot water heater was also leaking and had rust water flowing out. This was likely the cause of our higher water bills starting 4 months ago, and the leak in the front of the yard was what caused the 1k water bill. So 1 leak turned out to be 2.

Jeff fixed the front yard leak, but we are going to have to replace the hot water heater which is likely another $400 purchase. Fun stuff.